Ramona Jean Cox
Ramona Jean Cox
25 YOA
1526 Woodland Avenue
Des Moines, IA
Polk County
Case # 62-00508
April 29, 1962
The April 29, 1962, murder of Ramona Jean Cox in Des Moines drew nationwide attention.
It had all the elements of a salacious murder mystery: an attractive young woman raped and brutally killed by a sadist. Sadly, her death was reduced to stark headlines like “Slasher Slays Woman in Iowa,” which appeared in the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Post.
Despite the attention the case drew and a round-the-clock investigation by a beefed-up team of 18 detectives who questioned 3,000 individuals, no one was brought to justice and the murder of the young woman quickly went cold.
Ramona Cox was 25 years old, a farm girl from Moravia in Appanoose County on the border with Missouri. She worked as a secretary in Des Moines and lived alone in an unpretentious three-room apartment at 1526 Woodland Avenue near downtown.
Newspapers described Romona as “pretty,” “pert,” and “a blue-eyed blonde who tinted her hair auburn.” She was said to have “numerous men friends” and to “frequent taverns” in her neighborhood.
Des Moines Police pieced together the night of the murder. It was a Sunday — a week after Easter. The weekend was over and Ramona was preparing to return to her job the next morning.
Between 7:30 and 7:45 p.m., a witness saw a “well-dressed man” seated in Ramona’s apartment. He wore trousers and a light-colored shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
At 11:00 p.m., an 18-year-old neighbor and two girls standing on the sidewalk in front of the one-story apartment house heard a woman scream.
Then a stocky male about 5 feet 9 inches tall and wearing dark trousers and a white shirt leapt from the bathroom window of Ramona’s apartment, hit the ground six feet below, and ran down a dark alley. He dragged the white curtains behind him and they trailed out the window.
Courtesy photo Cedar Rapids GazetteInside, Ramona lay naked on the living room floor with her throat cut. She had been raped. The bathroom was blood-splattered and in the tub was a bloody hook-billed linoleum knife that belonged to the landlord and had been missing since he installed linoleum in the empty basement apartment the week before.
The witnesses said the male fleeing the scene had no blood on his light-colored shirt, so police believe he killed Ramona while naked or partially clothed and then washed up in her bathroom and put on his unsoiled pants and shirt, leaving behind a bloody undershirt.
There was blood on the inside front door handle, suggesting the killer started to leave that way and changed his mind and fled out the window instead.
Daytime temperatures reached 70 but fell below 60 by 10:00 p.m. It was a cloudy and humid spring night. Police said the bathroom window was difficult to open from both the inside and outside. If Ramona had left it open since the mild afternoon, the killer could have heaved himself through the window and surprised her in the bathroom while she was getting ready for bed. She was thought to be already wearing her pajamas.
If the window was not open, Ramona let him in. This suggested she knew the man but she could not have known, according to Chief of Detectives Edward J. McCarthy, that he was “a cold-blooded sadistic type.”
Ramona Jean Cox
The disarray of the apartment showed a struggle and that Ramona fought back, possibly scratching her assailant. Police sought information on men with tell-tale marks on their faces and bodies or who had disposed of clothing.
Police questioned about a dozen men known to be friends or acquaintances of Ramona but could not find a suspect among them. Two men were cleared through lie detector tests and the others by investigation and alibis.
A few days after the murder, police said a 14-year-old boy — termed “a husky youth” — was questioned and polygraphed at the State Bureau of Criminal Investigation. He was reportedly familiar with the house and admitted being in the vacant basement apartment where the linoleum knife was taken. He was also questioned about stealing women’s clothes off nearby clotheslines and peeping into Ramona’s windows.
His parents consented to lie detector tests and to examination of his clothing for blood stains. Although he was released in connection to Ramona’s death, psychiatric tests were ordered for what Detective Chief McCarthy said was “his own good.”
A parole violator who moved out of an apartment near the murder scene and left his job the Friday before was also ruled out.
A connection was sought between the Cox slaying and a knife murder in Kansas City, but police determined the circumstances were dissimilar.
Polk County Attorney Harry Perkins, Jr. and Chief of Police Vear Douglas appealed to the public for information, “no matter how insignificant it might seem.”
In mid-June Captain McCarthy announced that the FBI Lab analyzed hair from the man’s undershirt and Ramona’s hands and found it had “Negroid or mixed Caucasian and Negroid characteristics.” Newspaper accounts did not specify the race of the man seen fleeing.
On October 26, 1962 Frank J. Evans of Chicago — who fit the physical description of Ramona’s killer — forced Henrietta Kagin at gunpoint to undress in her West Des Moines home. He bound her with nylons and gagged her with gloves and left the house with a suitcase containing a radio, diamond ring, two antique firearms, and a valuable stamp collection.
Mrs. Kagin got free and called her husband Arthur Kagin at work in Des Moines. Going to his car, Arthur Kagin saw Evans with the suitcase and he and a passerby disarmed him and wrestled him to the ground until police arrived.
Ramona was the oldest child of Burdett and Hazel Harper Cox. Her family members were proud that she had the courage and gumption to leave Moravia, her small rural hometown, to live alone and make her fortunes in the “big city” of Des Moines. When she came home for visits, she brought presents for everyone.
She was survived by her parents and her siblings — Dale A., Rowena, and Nyle, who was only 8 years old at the time of his sister’s death.
Funeral services were held for Ramona at the Methodist Church in Moravia on May 1, 1962.
Questions and information about the unsolved 1962 murder of Ramona Cox should be directed to the Des Moines Police Department at 515-283-4864 or Iowa Cold Cases through the Contact form.
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I remember this as we lived a couple houses down across the alley. I then met a friend who lived in the same apt. and she showed me where you could still see blood around the tub from this incident. It was pretty scary back then.
We lived a block north of where this happened-had friends that lived in the front of the building-wasn’t the landlord/maintenance man suspected?